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26 of 27 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
Reginald Hill - A Cure for All Diseases, 30 April 2008
Turns out Dalziel is alive and kicking, not a bit dead. But then, who ever believed that anything else was going to be the case. After the explosion that briefly felled him, the Fat Man is recovering very nicely at the Avalon clinic in the seaside resort of Sandytown, a town renowned for healing and alternative therapies. And changes are afoot. The principle landowner, much-married Lady Daphne Denham, and her business partner (her fuelled by money and him idealism) have big plans for the town, rebranding the place as a centre dedicated to alternative therapy, and remarketing the Avalon clinic. It's clear there are tensions lurking, especially as regards Lady Denham and her concomitant heirs, who troupe around in a sophisticated game of who'll-come-up-trumps-in-the-will. It's some time before anything murderous actually happens, but happen in does, in notably gruesome fashion. Enter, then, Pascoe, who must get to the bottom of the problem. Helped and hindered by Dalziel, of course, who can't resist doing a bit of extra-curricular investigating himself. With mixed consequences...
A Cure for All Diseases proves to be a rabble-rousing return to the fray for Dalziel, though it is a novel that should be approached with caution if you like your murder mysteries told conventionally. There are three main strands to the book. There's standard third-person narrative, yes, but there's a lot else too: large parts are told from Dalziel's first-person perspective, as he dictates a diary into a Dictaphone provided by his doctor (these sections are hugely enjoyable, but I still can't really see it happening). The remaining parts consist of emails from Charlotte Heywood (a recently graduated psychologist who has been persuaded to cast a scientifically-biased eye over the therapies that go on) to her sister, relating everything that goes on in the town and the things she notices. And it's these that are the problematic ones. Heywood is in a brilliant position to witness events that are crucial to the story, or could be, and Hill uses this excellently. However, I suspect many people (and a brief peruse of amazon confirms this) will not find these emails easygoing, especially Hill's core readership. They are written as genuine informal emails are - without such things as apostrophes, much regard for grammar, spelling, etc. They are not, let us say, a form of writing that's very easy to read, or get used to, if you don't use it yourself. Even I found them a little excessive at times, though for their length more than anything else, and the fact that I so enjoy the other two styles. The use of emails is not exactly new (as any reader of Minette Walters will know), but to include any in the style of these in a novel is a bold move indeed. And Hill does use them to illustrate the character of Charlotte Heywood brilliantly.
Apart from that, and the fact that it's admittedly a little long, A Cure for All Diseases is first class. Hill's style out of the emails is as entertaining as ever, his characters as engaging as ever, his plotting as exemplary as ever. And there's such social depth to it all. The novel begins with a dedication to Janeites (Austen fans), and with an epigram from Sanditon, her unfinished novel. The text that follows is clearly heavily influenced by Austen and her unfinished novel (I haven't read it, but even from a glance at wikipedia I can see parallels). The social aspects of the novel, the depth of the townly and familial relations, the three suitors who catch Heywood's eye (even if one of them is Franny Roote, here making his finest appearance in a Hill novel), all of it is Austenesque. And that may contribute to why it sometimes feels a little overlong (no offence to Austen fans, of course!) Many of Hill's novels are influenced by different dusty corners of the literary world: Arms and the Women by Greek and Roman poetry, Death's Jest Book by T.L. Beddoes, Dialogues of the Dead by the Lucian dialogues, and Good Morning, Midnight by Emily Dickinson. In fact, if I recall, Austen has popped up before in Pictures of Perfection. Hill is clearly a huge fan, and this latest entry is perhaps his most accomplished appreciation yet, certainly it is the fullest in scope. One senses a labour of love.
So, to sum up: mostly brilliant. The matriarchal Daphne Denham is a great character, as are most of them rest of them, but she stands out. Dalziel is on supremely entertaining form, and his convalescent musings are often hilarious. There are times when I was starting to think it was overlong and had better have a darn good end, and indeed it does! The mystery aspects of the plot are just as fine as Hill has ever done. It would be difficult to recommend it unreservedly, because it is definitely the case that some readers will find the emails very hard going (as the vastly mixed reviews here prove). However, you get used to them, and towards the last half of the book they do start petering out. What you're left with is a very fine novel, full of everything we love reading Reginald Hill for, and that is well-worth your while persevering with.
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8 of 9 people found the following review helpful:
4.0 out of 5 stars
What's all the fuss about?, 19 Mar 2008
Whats all the fuss about ? I just finished reading this and thought I would check out what other people thought. Wow. There are alot of disgruntled fat Andy fans out there. But why? Yes the technique of using e-mails and transcripts of recordings, as well as straight forward narrative is a little challenging, but surely any long term fan of Hill's work will not be unfamiliar with his occasional experiments? Further, the use of the direct voice of certain characters adds a different perspective. In particular we get to hear exactly what Andy thinks of the new Peter Pascoe and his handling of the case. The emails are pure Jane Austin for the 21st century as the character in question analyzes other key characters and in particular the three male romantic leads/suitors/suspects. Its Frank Churchill, Mr Elton and Mr knightly all over again with a 21st century twist. Whats more the spelling mistakes/shorthand in the e-mails are part of the plot. Add in the surprise re-appearance of Franny Roote and you have a complex, admittedly challenging, but ultimately enjoyable romp by the sea.
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26 of 32 people found the following review helpful:
3.0 out of 5 stars
A bit disappointing, but worth a read if you've got time to spare, 15 Mar 2008
Reginald Hill is a restlessly ambitious and inventive writer, always experimenting with the format of the crime novel in attempts to come up with something new. The fact he's still doing it after so many great books, and after so many years in the business is both laudable and astonishing. Here, he takes the traditional whodunit and plays tricks with the structure. But, I'm afraid the whole thing is a) far too long and occasionally tedious; b) painful to read at times - as other reviewers have already noted.
The book is told from the viewpoints of several characters, with intermittent passages of third person narration. So you get to know the thought processes of Andy Dalziel, Peter Pascoe and Charlotte (Charley) Heywood, a young psychology graduate whose e-mails to her sister form a significant part of the narrative and are both frustrating and annoying to read. Also throw in, briefly, Francis Roote, who has managed to shoehorn his way into the lives of Dalziel and Pascoe once again, and you have a large number of `voices' in this book.
Without going into plot details, the solution/s are not altogether satisfying. Part of the book is also apparently some kind of homage to Jane Austen's unfinished novel 'Sanditon'. Not having read this, I can't comment, but maybe Mr. Hill has tried to be just a little bit too clever in `A Cure for all Diseases'.
So what are its good points? Well, for a start, the characterization is, as usual, superb. Fat Andy is, as always, Fat Andy: boisterous, oafish, sharp as a tack. Francis Roote is also a great original creation and the remainder of the big cast of characters are all skillfully drawn and clearly defined. The quality of prose is also well up to standard, and even though Charley Heywood's writings are irksome, Reg has managed to capture the chatty voice of a young, intelligent woman very well. You can admire it, without necessarily enjoying it (or even being able to tolerate it).
Throw in Hill's trademark sly humour and the interplay between the characters and you find yourself rooting for it to all end in a blaze of glory to reward your perseverance in getting to the end. But as previously noted, I don't believe it does. Overall there's just too much of eveything going on in here and I can see a lot of readers abandoning this partway through, never to finish it.
Last year's Dalziel and Pascoe - the fabulous 'The Death of Dalziel' -was, for my money, the best British crime novel of the year. This follow-up which finds Andy Dalziel convalescing after surviving the bomb blast in that book, is not in the same league.
As a big fan of Reg Hill, I'll give this three stars, but if you're a newbie, you'll probably believe it's worth no more than two at best. There's a great, much smaller book in here somewhere, but at 535 pages long, unless you've read Reg Hill before and love his stuff, you're going to find your patience sorely tested.
Never mind, Reg is allowed to be disappointing every now and again; let's hope his new Joe Sixsmith novel - also due out this year - is better than this.
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